June 4, Tiananmen Square
I have studied and paid attention to Chinese politics since at least 1965.During the summer of 1989, after watching the demonstrations and massacre of April, May, and June in (and around) Tiananmen Square I wrote an illustrated data base cataloging the events, the people, and the places relevant to the tragedies. I figure I spent about 400 hours on the project, which was published by the HyperMedia Clearing House (at the University of Colorado - Denver).
For several years, my students used the database in an exercise asking them to describe decision-making in the PRC.
For us geezers, the events of 1989, are powerful memories, and what happened in Beijing was one of many dramatic episodes that year. It's not so relevant today to the study of government and politics in the PRC. Here's one of the reasons.
Tiananmen anniversary unimportant to China's youth
In his baggy shorts hanging below the knees, Puma sneakers and spiky hair, Wang Kangkang is hip to the present, clueless about the past.
Although he comes often to see the nightly ceremony of the Chinese flag being lowered at Tiananmen Square, he doesn't know what happened here in 1989 and doesn't really care.
"Well, it happened before I was born," the 19-year-old said, looking down at his sneakered feet as the crowd shuffled out of the vast expanse of concrete on a balmy evening. "In any case, it's history. Why should we dwell on the past?"..
Apathy as much as censorship has pushed the events of 1989 into the dark recesses of history.
The young Chinese -- one graying activist calls them "the stupid generation" -- remain willfully ignorant about the past...
The activists of the 1980s, many of them still involved with political issues, despair over the attitudes of the younger generation.
"This is the stupid generation. They were raised on Coca-Cola and Western movies and they're very isolated from their country's history," said Zhang Shihe, 56, a blogger and political activist...
Zhou Shuyang, 23, who works in marketing for a European company, speaks fluent English and is tech-savvy enough to get around the "Great Firewall of China" and read whatever she likes online.
But she fully supports the government's efforts to restrict the information.
"If there is too much freedom, all sorts of false rumors can spread on the Internet," she said. "It's not easy to control such a big and diverse country as China."
Zhou added, "For me right now, I feel satisfied with my life, my country. I seldom think about politics."...
Jeremiah Jenne, an American historian teaching and researching in Beijing wrote the following in his blog, "Jottings from the Granite Studio."
Back in Beijing in the middle of a blackout
I’m now back in Beijing and seem to have landed into the middle of a history blackout. I’ve said it before, but nothing makes the CCP look more like a bunch of Kim Jong-il wannabes then when they pull one of these periodic returns to the bad old days of information blackouts and official stupidity...
The ridiculous measures being undertaken in this pathetic campaign of official amnesia include increasing the thug count on the streets of Beijing, the exile of several octogenarians out of the capital, the censoring of foreign satellite signals, the interdiction of foreign newspapers, and even the blocking of social networking sites like Twitter...
This is the CCP in full-blown ninny mode.
The truth is that few remembrances of June 4th will occur on the mainland...
But what’s astonishing to me though is that a country with such a rich intellectual and historical tradition would be content to take such a profoundly anti-intellectual approach to history, but I guess such is the “culture” of learning in today’s PRC, which can best be summed up as “Take a test, memorize your lessons, graduate, shut up, quit thinking, and buy a damn car.”
If I sound a little testy, it’s because I am. When history is swept under the rug, it can begin to rot and that stench is the smell of fear, the odor of a government which cannot tolerate ideas or perspectives with which it disagrees...
Labels: China, history, legitimacy, politics, rule-of-law
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:18 AM
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